Thoughts on NaNoWriMo

Around 4:10 p.m. yesterday, I crossed the 50,000 word mark of the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) competition. During the entire month of November (read: 30 days), a writer is charged with the task of producing an extended work of fiction (something that resembles a novel/novella), and if he/she accomplishes that feat, he/she is considered a winner (the prize being more like a symbolic reward for hard work than a financial award from a straight-up battle with other writers). Having been officially declared a NaNoWriMo winner, I must say that the experience was truly more involved than I had originally anticipated.

It's easy to wake up on a morning in mid-October thinking that it's not so bad to write 1,667 words a day. I believed that it would be a breeze. Boy was I wrong! After week one, things started to slow down dramatically in my output and my writing became more jagged, despite my constant need to refer to the handbook for the month (No Plot? No Problem). I had trouble silencing the "inner critic" in me that wanted to fix misspelled words and grammatical errors, errors in plot construction, and even errors in character references. Finally, I just started highlighting what I would fix on my rewrite of the manuscript. Ignoring those glowing yellow paragraphs, I pushed ahead. When I got within earshot of the finish line, I wondered why I had decided to write a story that required so much emotional interaction on the part of the characters. It seemed like every exasperation of my characters became an exasperation from my own tired writing soul. I grunted and moaned, trying to ignore the word count before finally looking down and seeing that my manuscript had nearly gone one hundred words past the goal of 50,000.

Now that I have finished the contest, I am left to look at this mass of words, much in the way a sculptor would look at a block of clay: searching to find the piece of art within the massive clump of material. The writer in me slung the words to get the mound of clay into existence, but the artist in me must excavate the beauty of the true novel within.

That will be what I do next, once I have swept the confetti from the floor of my office. :-)

A Review of Patricia Neely-Dorsey's "Reflections of a Mississippi Magnolia"

Aleda Shirley, a poet and friend who passed away in 2008, once said of Mississippi, “I have a love/hate relationship with it.” Having grown up in Mississippi myself, I can relate to that statement, especially as an African American. That is why I was unsure of what to expect when I read Patricia Neely-Dorsey’s ode to Mississippi, a poetry collection entitled Reflections of a Mississippi Magnolia: A Life in Poems. What Mrs. Dorsey accomplishes with this work is both interesting and refreshing because she chooses to focus on a unifying Southern experience, one that, regardless of race or class, resonates as a common denominator to those of us who actually know what a muscadine is or have ever purchased fruit off the bed of a pickup truck.

The beauty of her poems emanates from the simplicity of her imagery, which can be seen even in the first poem of the collection, “Southern Life,” where she describes the beauty of a Southern setting through the use of images like “Wooden porches cleanly swept” and “tea that’s syrupy sweet.” While her general ode to Mississippi is tender and nostalgic, Mrs. Dorsey’s personal poems are my favorites of the collection. Her candid explorations of her love for her husband and son, her respect for those who helped to rear her, and her own self-examination add enormously to an already quite suitable poetic collection. My absolute favorite poem in the collection, incidentally, is also among the shortest in the collection. It is called “Turning 40” and goes as follows:

When I turned 40,
I felt so brand new;
I bought a bikini,
And got a tattoo;
For some unknown reason,
I felt more alive;
I can’t imagine what’ll happen,
When I turn 45.

Mrs. Dorsey’s passion for life, love, and the South come shining through in this collection, reminding those of us who do have the aforementioned love/hate relationship with Mississippi why it is that we continue to come home over and over again and love the fabric of our home, in spite of some of its shadows.

* Please click HERE or on the title to this entry to go to Mrs. Dorsey's website for more info on her book.

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

One of the things that I am finding increasingly interesting with my students is that many of them have committed themselves to majors that are not their passions in order to please loved ones. On the first day of class, I typically ask each of them what their ultimate professional goals are. I do that in order to try to tailor the contents of my class in a way to emphasize how such a skill set (as the one I am teaching) is relevant to them in the long run, and not just a general studies elective needed to graduate. Recently, however, I administered an assignment asking my classes to consider the words of Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem" and what kind of impact, if any, did it have on how they would pursue their own dreams. I was surprised when many of them candidly confessed that their dreams did not align with their current majors and that many of them felt trapped by the expectations of others.

This shouldn't have surprised me though.

In my own professional development I have gone from the world of magazine publishing to the practice of law to serving as an English professor at a university I grew up admiring. Clearly, one thing can be said for sure: figuring out where I wanted to spend my energies wasn't always an easy thing to do. Now, I look at my students and see in their eyes their own desires to pursue fashion, music, nonprofit management, and anything that would not have been in the textbook of careers I had when I grew up, yet they are majoring in nursing, the sciences, history, and a range of other subjects that don't reflect their interests, all because they feel it is the safest road (i.e., it's the road that makes getting a degree from a private institution financially worthwhile, especially to the parents paying for that degree). Many of them feel as if their true dreams will dry up like "a raisin in the sun" or "fester like a sore and run."

I imagine that being that young and already knowing that you don't want to do something, but still doing it anyway, would be extremely bothersome. I tell them that life is not as long as they think it is and that doing what makes them happy has a deeper reward than having a certain salary. In my life, I have made different salaries, some of them much higher than others, but ultimately, getting up in the morning and going to work without the frustrations of doing something that doesn't make me happy is its own greatest reward.

In 2009, there are a much wider variety of jobs out there than there were in earlier generations, so why shouldn't kids be able to reach for dreams that might not have been options for their parents? Each generation gains additional choices, so it would appear that we, as an older generation, would support their pursual of those choices. One thing that life has shown me so far is that having a passion makes life a lot more enjoyable. I figure since I will die some day, I'd rather die knowing that I'm doing something that I love or am at least angling my life to such an end.

That's the advice I give. And while I know it's not always that simple to make such a decision, one would only need to hear of other dreams deferred to see the benefit of aligning yourself with your passions sooner than later.

A Little NaNoWriMo Humor

I liked this comic strip, especially because I could relate to having written chunks of my NaNoWriMo project on my iPhone. :-)



* Click on the title link for this posting to see more of Inky Girl's comics on writing.

Can Amazon Nuke the Nook? (The Reverse Argument)

O.K. This is a first: writing a flip-side argument to a previous posting. Over the past few days, however, I have been doing an enormous amount of research on both the Kindle 2 and the Nook ("nook"). In other words, the dust has had a chance to settle, and my thinking has shifted a bit since the last posting.

Earlier, I was prepared to anoint nook as the winner without the thing having been released, but looking at both of the e-readers (at least from all of the available info), some things I looked at as pros and cons and switched places. For one, I viewed the wi-fi of nook as an advantage, failing to consider such a thing is not particularly a big deal if there is no browser. Also, I liked the idea of nook being able to read multiple formats, but I have come to find out that that's not as a big a deal to me as I thought it would be. With the pricing of amazon.com's Kindle books being on average noticeably lower than nook, one would have to look to other sites from which to purchase books. It's clear that a customer is likely to get a much better price and better selection from an established online retailer like Amazon, if only because Amazon is in a position to keep its prices low. Basically, Amazon is like the Wal-Mart of e-commerce, and they can afford to be ultra competitive on pricing. And since I don't own any e-books (that I have paid for), I don't have a problem buying my books from one location--especially if that location has the best price in town.

Earlier I mentioned the sexy vs. functional argument. I still think that nook is far sexier than the Kindle 2, but as a matter of personal preference, I do like a device to be as thin and sleek as possible. I do hate that there is not a better selection of cases available for the Kindle, though, but such is life.

The touch screen is definitely a nice look for nook, but at the end of the day, you're still looking at an e-ink screen, so that's not a monster advantage over the Kindle 2.

nook has the ability to play mp3s; Kindle 2 has a text-to-speech function.

I think the thing that stands out the most is a looming question as to how such a thing would ultimately affect Barnes & Noble's business model. The sales of any e-books would essentially cannibalize their existing brick-and-mortar business model; whereas, Amazon stands to benefit with its selling of e-books since they don't have to deal with the warehousing issue, thereby simplifying their own business model to be more efficient. Such an issue could have long-term consequences on the company--and therefore the customer.

Oh yeah, and B&N has decided that they won't honor 10% discount membership cards (that cost $25 annually) on e-books or nook. Amazon's prices are lower and don't require a $25 membership card to get that price, so I guess I won't be renewing my membership card this year.

So I'm still on the fence with an e-book reader, mainly because I know both companies will have to react to the other and make adjustments to really "win" this battle. Ironically, both companies have strengthened another e-book reader in the process: the iPhone. With both apps available for free (and a color screen on which to read them), Apple might have actually played it the right way. After all, formats of files and all of that stuff doesn't matter when you can just close one application and launch another.

Still I feel I'll get a dedicated reader, simply because my eyes can't take reading off a computer screen for too long. Thoughts anyone?

(Re)Kindle Your Reading with a Little Nook(ie)?

In full disclosure, I must reluctantly admit that I have become a bit of a gadget guy, especially since I started using the iPhone. To compound that, I am also a bibliophile with books at home, in my office, and in storage in Mississippi. So clearly I am the target market for anyone looking to sell an e-book reader. But it was only recently that I considered doing so, and it took Barnes & Noble entering the market to nudge me that one step closer to purchasing one.

Rather than rattle off the specs for B&N's nook vs. the specs for Amazon's Kindle 2 (which can be found in one iteration on B&N's own website), I will instead explain why it is that I never bought the Kindle 2. The first time I saw the original Kindle I laughed--aloud. It looked like a giant Etch-a-Sketch made out of Legos. The Kindle 2, while much improved, still looked like a device that was clearly behind the technology. (I probably felt that way because I had been using an iPhone for a while by that time.) The thinness of the device was appealing, as was its ability to hold 1,500 books, but the cost was outrageous and Amazon's policy for dealing with sold books was a bit disappointing. At $349, the device cost far more than my phone and did far less. It did not help matters that Amazon had developed a reputation for pulling purchased books off of people's Kindles and refunding their money.

Then Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle 2 to $299.

Then Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle 2 to $259, it's current price.

The only problem with two price drops in less than a year is that it sends a very clear signal (at least to me) that Amazon doesn't even know the value of its own product. The notion of dropping the price just because it could seems very weak, and if I were an early adopter of the product, I would be pissed. Didn't Amazon learn anything about the fiasco of the price drop with the initial iPhone?

Now B&N enters the market with a "Kindle-Killer" which employs the use of a touch screen, while maintaing the e-ink display--and all for $259, the current price of the Kindle 2. While there are pros and cons to each device, the strongest point to me is the way B&N's device alleges (since the product has yet to be released) to integrate seamlessly with its brick and mortar stores. (Oh yeah, and there's that lending thing, too.) The fact that I could read an e-book for free while sitting in the store, just like I could a regular book, is awesome. I'm also a sucker for coupons on books.

But there's another major difference that pushes me toward the nook over the Kindle 2: sexiness. Although the Kindle 2 is thinner, the marketing and the look of the product are sexier as they relate to the nook. The Kindle 2 comes across as functional, while the nook comes across as, well, sexy. It also helps that the nook reads ePub formatted books.

I could very well wait and see what Microsoft and Apple come up with in the next year or so (if rumors are to be believed), but I have in the meantime become more appreciative of the idea of a dedicated device. I have an iPhone and a laptop, and I'm not sure I need another device that will mimic those capabilities at this point. However, I do carry around an enormous number of books, so I can readily see the simplicity of an e-book reader.

While I didn't consider Sony in this blog entry, I know that the company is doing its "thing" and has followers. However, I use Amazon.com and B&N a lot, so the likelihood of my going with one of their readers, if I were so inclined, would be much higher.

Being a techie/bibliophilic type of guy, I will probably hop off the fence soon and join the ranks of people who profess to actually read more with their e-book readers than they did before.

I welcome the challenge.

While Walking to the Car

I saw this and had to share it. The space was for breast cancer survivors--and all of the drivers at the outlet observed the space, keeping it open.



-- Sent via iPhone